I beseech your Lordships seriously to look upon the whole nature of the principles upon which the prisoner defends himself.  He appeals to the custom and usage of the Mogul empire; and the constitution of that empire is, he says, arbitrary power.  He says, that he does not know whether any act of Parliament bound him not to exercise this arbitrary power, and that, if any such act should in future be made, it would be mischievous and ruinous to our empire in India.  Thus he has at once repealed all preceding acts, he has annulled by prospect every future act you can make; and it is not in the power of the Parliament of Great Britain, without ruining the empire, to hinder his exercising this despotic authority.  All Asia is by him disfranchised at a stroke.  Its inhabitants have no rights, no laws, no liberties; their state is mean and depraved; they may be fined for any purpose of court extravagance or prodigality,—­or as Cheyt Sing was fined by him, not only upon every war, but upon every pretence of war.

This is the account he gives of his power, and of the people subject to the British government in India.  We deny that the act of Parliament gave him any such power; we deny that the India Company gave him any such power, or that they had ever any such power to give; we even deny that there exists in all the human race a power to make the government of any state dependent upon individual will.  We disclaim, we reject all such doctrines with disdain and indignation; and we have brought them up to your Lordships to be tried at your bar.

What must be the condition of the people of India, governed, as they have been, by persons who maintain these principles as maxims of government, and not as occasional deviations caused by the irregular will of man,—­principles by which the whole system of society is to be controlled, not by law, reason, or justice, but by the will of one man?

Your Lordships will remark, that not only the whole of the laws, rights, and usages, but the very being of the people, are exposed to ruin:  for Mr. Hastings says, that the people may be fined, that they may be exiled, that they may be imprisoned, and that even their lives are dependent upon the mere will of their foreign master; and that he, the Company’s Governor, exercised that will under the authority of this country.  Remark, my Lords, his application of this doctrine.  “I would,” he says, “have kept Cheyt Sing from the consequences of this dependence, by making him independent, and not in any manner subjecting him to our government.  The moment he came into a state of dependence upon the British government, all these evils attached upon him.—­It is,” he adds, “disagreeable to me to exert such powers; but I know they must be exerted; and I declare there is no security from this arbitrary power, but by having nothing to do with the British government.”